A Crown
by Canton For King
Summary: Talia seduces Bruce while her thoughts fall in places Gotham's Dark Knight holds no power. Talia Al Ghul/Bane


They meet outside the mansion, coincidence of careful design. She smiles and laughs, caught in the rain with him. For a man with so little to his name, his smile is more genuine than others that have crossed her way. Coincidence of careful design, she follows him inside.

Wayne calls her Miranda and kisses her softly. Her hair's still wet and it whips against her face, keeps her distracted. His hands slide off her shoes and she reminds herself that she must prostitute her body to prostitute her father's cause. She reminds herself that this is the way to win the trust of Gotham's dark knight.

The image of a train wreck comes to mind so easily, a twisted mesh of metal and glass. Blood colours the ground; this is her father's coffin. The image comes so easily and resolve explodes in her chest once more, the resolve to complete the work started by the League of Shadows. Arms wrap around her and they're not Wayne's.

She thinks of Bane. He caught her in his grasp, pulled her away from her father's deathbed before Gotham City's finest saw her unbidden tears and mouth dropped open in shock. It was Bane who carried her until her mind restarted and she could think for herself once more. Then Bane followed.

Wayne flips her over, lays her softly down upon faux fur throws and silk pillows. He's harder than she expected, full of angles and unyielding muscle. Even now he gives nothing away with his smooth face and scarred skin. He's not like her protector.

The rain lashes against the window and idly she pretends she can count the drops. On those few days that it rained when she was young, their home would flood. She would wake, spitting water, and think for a heartbeat that she was going to drown. The thought's silly now, but to a child of the pit rain's more than just the sky's tears.

Wayne calls her Miranda and whispers in her ear, tells her how amazing she is. Talia doesn't bother to say anything back. She doesn't need to. Wayne will mould the words himself. She just presses against him, the sweat on their skin like a thin film to keep them from ever truly touching.

Strange thoughts fill her mind as Wayne dips down to kiss her neck. The roof hunches above them, firelight playing on golden frescos painted with money-greased hands. It's one of the things Talia hates most about these cities - the roofs. A mountain range of fantastical constructions as people who think themselves untouchable reach for a sky they never care to look at.

Her temporary Gotham house is built with glass roofs so that she will always be able to see the sky. She can lie in bed and see the galaxy stretched above her. Metal frames criss-cross the glass like bars but it doesn't matter. Talia knows that Bane will rip them down if she asks him.

In summer the house heats up until she feels like meat in an oven, but somehow she can't bring herself to care. Sometimes she thinks there's nothing more beautiful than the sun in a bright blue sky. Wayne whispers in her ear; he calls her Miranda, tells her she's beautiful. Anger surges in her veins and she bites her lip to hold it in.

After their breathing falls steady they lie among the luxuries of a privileged life and Talia counts the embers that throw themselves against the fireplace grate like martyrs for a lost cause. Caught in flames, the wood cracks and snaps like artillery to join the gunfire rain.

It's so easy to imagine it, even as Wayne's fingers follow the contours of her skin. It's so easy to imagine Gotham burning in a dragon's breath burst of nuclear fire. She stokes the flames in Wayne mansion and imagines her father's work in a mushroom cloud painted on the horizon.

In time she won't need to imagine. She'll be there, the architect of this great city's end. It won't be long before her protector rises and then the screams will begin. She smiles into the fire even as Wayne's fingers run up her spine.

They stop on a scar at the base of her neck, a rigid monument to her past. She remembers the knife, cold and unyielding, slicing smoothly through her skin. She remembers warm blood trickling down the mountain range of her spine. He had laughed in her face, the man who murdered her mother. The knife had pressed against her neck and blood had run across her skin but not all of it had been hers.

Then her protector had appeared with a scarf wrapped around his face so that all she saw were eyes the colour of the dirt-packed walls that trapped them. His hands had wrapped around the throat of her mother's murderer, lifted him from the ground so the knife at her back fell to the dirt. She had picked it up then, felt the weight in her hand, and slid it between the ribs of her mother's murderer.

Holding the faux fur throw to her breast, she turns to Wayne and lets a vague smile fall on her face. She tells him that her family didn't have everything, lets him know that she's not one of his fake, rich friends. For some a fire can be the simplest of luxuries.

She tells herself to run a hand over Wayne's chest, feel the muscles that shape his body and leave little room for anything else. Even now, she can only think how different he is from Bane. Surrounded by a soft life, he's hard stone and tensed flesh. Her protector is softer, his muscle hidden from her eyes, so that he's shaped by something kinder than push-ups and sit-ups and pain.

Wayne cranes up to push his lips to hers and she thinks how strange it is to miss a mask. He called her 'my queen' once, her protector. He called her 'my queen' told her he'd do anything she wished. Even as Talia let her fingers trace the frame of his metal mouth, she laughed. A crown's merely a hat that lets the rain in.


End file.
